Pomp and fanfare as Crown Paints clinch company of the year award

Crown Paints and Cube Movers are the new winners of this year’s Company of the Year Award (Coya) and Small and Medium Enterprise of the Year Award (Smoya), respectively.

The two bagged three awards each during a ceremony held at Safari Park Hotel on Friday to underscore exemplary business practices.

Crown Paints Kenya chief executive officer, Mr Rakesh Rao, was also named CEO of the year. The theme of the event was business excellence for global competitiveness.

“In the modern world, you either aspire to face competition by establishing sound systems, or you sit back and are edged out by the competition, mainly global firms that are expanding,” Kenya Institute of Management boss David Muturi said.

Kenya Institute of Management is the brainchild of Coya and Smoya, and uses an assessment tool – organisational performance index (OPI) – to rate the performance of businesses on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 as the highest score.

COMPETITIVE EDGE
The key objective is to assess the performance of companies in certain areas for purposes of benchmarking them against global business metrics so as to boost competitiveness and excellence.

Crown Paints and Cube Movers were also winners in the leadership and management category, as well as in productivity and quality sections of their respective categories (Coya and Smoya).

“This is a tremendous experience to all companies that participate in the survey. Whether you emerge a winner or not, it shapes an organisation,” said Tom Mshindi, Nation Media Group chief operations officer.

He added that adoption of the organisational performance index is the way to go for companies intending to maintain a competitive edge in the fast changing world. Nation Media Group is the media partner of the survey.

Jubilee Insurance bagged two awards in human resource management and financial management for maintaining a leadership role in the face of stiff competition.

The insurer’s head of human resource department, Mrs Emily Kamunde, scoped the manager of the year award. The award was introduced in memory of Kirit Dave, a renowned entrepreneur and industrialist.

Last year’s winner of Coya, Britam, took home the customer orientation and marketing award.

MANAGEMENT CAPABILITIES

This was the 15th edition of the annual awards ceremony that was launched in 2000 with a view of enhancing organisation’s management capabilities and performance excellence.

There were a total of 11 awards in the Coya category and nine in Smoya.

Speaking at the event, chief guest and Deputy President William Ruto said the survey should be introduced in the public sector to spur excellent business practices.

“We actually need such a survey both at national and county government level,” Mr Ruto said in a speech read by Mr Joseph Tiampati, the Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Information, Communications and Technology.

Kenyatta National Hospital and Northern Water Services Board received the judges’ awards under Coya. The award recognises organisations that have shown positive response to the assessment process.

Other firm’s that were feted under Coya included County Provident Fund, Githunguri Dairies and Kenya Orient Insurance.

Tropical Africa Brands, Pewin Cabs, Meru-based Capital Sacco Ltd, and Metropolitan Hospital were also recognised under Smoya.

The judges award under Smoya went to Imaarika Sacco, AAKI consultant architects and Mombasa-based Yehu microfinance trust.